New Weapons Old Politics

Author : Thomas L. McNaugher
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 0815718705
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book New Weapons, Old Politics written by Thomas L. McNaugher and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressures into that technical development and procurement process. Today's weapons are more complicated than their predecessors. So are the nation's military forces. The design of new systems and their integration into the force structure demand more care, time, and flexibility. Yet time and flexibility are precisely what political pressures remove from the acquisitions process. In a series of case studies and conceptual discussions, McNaugher tackles concerns at the heart of the debate about acquisition—the slow and heavily bureaucratic approach to development, the preference for ultimate weapons over well-organized and trained forces, and the counterproductive incentives facing the nation's defense firms. He calls for changes that run against the current fashion—less centralization or procurement, less haste in developing new weapons, and greater use of competition as a means of removing the development process from political oversight. Above all, McNaugher shows how the United States tries to buy research and development on the cheap, and how costly this has been. The nation can improve its acquisition process, he concludes, only when it recognizes the need to pay for the full exploration of new technology.

Author : Thomas L. McNaugher
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815718703
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book New Weapons, Old Politics written by Thomas L. McNaugher and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressures into that technical development and procurement process. Today's weapons are more complicated than their predecessors. So are the nation's military forces. The design of new systems and their integration into the force structure demand more care, time, and flexibility. Yet time and flexibility are precisely what political pressures remove from the acquisitions process. In a series of case studies and conceptual discussions, McNaugher tackles concerns at the heart of the debate about acquisition—the slow and heavily bureaucratic approach to development, the preference for ultimate weapons over well-organized and trained forces, and the counterproductive incentives facing the nation's defense firms. He calls for changes that run against the current fashion—less centralization or procurement, less haste in developing new weapons, and greater use of competition as a means of removing the development process from political oversight. Above all, McNaugher shows how the United States tries to buy research and development on the cheap, and how costly this has been. The nation can improve its acquisition process, he concludes, only when it recognizes the need to pay for the full exploration of new technology.

Author : Mark M. Rich
Publisher : Mark M. Rich
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 756 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book New World War written by Mark M. Rich and published by Mark M. Rich. This book was released on 2023-11-11 with total page 756 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A silent war is taking place in cities all over the planet. It is covered-up by the media, mental health system, NGOs, and our elected officials. Now that the financial elite are finished using the US military and allied forces to conquer nations in their quest for global domination, they're neutralizing individuals and groups of resisters who live among the people. To do this, they have recruited a major portion of the civilian population, which is used as a surrogate force to persecute those who have been identified as enemies. As part of the same agenda, the security forces are conducting psychological operations on civilians and torturing them with directed-energy weapons. The entire operation is in service to some very wealthy psychopaths who rule our society, as part of a global revolution intended to result in a planetary dictatorship, known as the New World Order.

Author : Lauren Holland
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135594309
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Weapons Under Fire written by Lauren Holland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1997. In an effort to find the validity of middle ground, this book offers a comprehensive analysis that looks further than the House Committee on National Security's actions on the B-2 bomber, President Clinton's campaign promise to support the Seawolf submarine, and the Pentagon's use of a concurrent and risky management strategy for the $71.6 billion F-22 fighter aircraft program. It provides a dissection of the decision-making process for a representative sample of major weapons systems to invalidate the claims that pork and malfeasance are both pervasive and determinate.

Author : Fredrick E. Ayres
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674241096
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Weapon of Choice written by Fredrick E. Ayres and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How ordinary Americans, frustrated by the legal and political wrangling over the Second Amendment, can fight for reforms that will both respect gun owners’ rights and reduce gun violence. Efforts to reduce gun violence in the United States face formidable political and constitutional barriers. Legislation that would ban or broadly restrict firearms runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Second Amendment. And gun rights advocates have joined a politically savvy firearm industry in a powerful coalition that stymies reform. Ian Ayres and Fredrick Vars suggest a new way forward. We can decrease the number of gun deaths, they argue, by empowering individual citizens to choose common-sense gun reforms for themselves. Rather than ask politicians to impose one-size-fits-all rules, we can harness a libertarian approach—one that respects and expands individual freedom and personal choice—to combat the scourge of gun violence. Ayres and Vars identify ten policies that can be immediately adopted at the state level to reduce the number of gun-related deaths without affecting the rights of gun owners. For example, Donna’s Law, a voluntary program whereby individuals can choose to restrict their ability to purchase or possess firearms, can significantly decrease suicide rates. Amending Red Flag statutes, which allow judges to restrict access to guns when an individual has shown evidence of dangerousness, can give police flexible and effective tools to keep people safe. Encouraging the use of unlawful possession petitions can help communities remove guns from more than a million Americans who are legally disqualified from owning them. By embracing these and other new forms of decentralized gun control, the United States can move past partisan gridlock and save lives now.

Author : Freeman J. Dyson
Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9780060390396
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Weapons and Hope written by Freeman J. Dyson and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1985 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British-born physicist Dyson examines the historical and cultural context in which nuclear weapons were made and argues that the problems they pose are part of the history of man and war, and that their control lies within our cultural, political and technical possibilities. Along with moving personal memories of war and pacifism, he offers insightful comments on the Soviet Union and the issue of verification. He concludes that the demands of military realism are compatible with the moral imperative to move away from nuclear weapons, and that a radical shift toward non-nuclear strategy can exist beside the realities of Soviet power. (For sale in India at Rs. 80.00).

Author : Warren A. Chin
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351162349
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book British Weapons Acquisition Policy and the Futility of Reform written by Warren A. Chin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2004. This incisive work reveals the causes of escalating costs and delays in British defence procurement from 1945 to the present. Tackling a complex subject in a straightforward and readable manner, it considers how successive British governments reacted to this problem, why they adopted the reforms they did and why these reforms failed to have any meaningful effect on the operation of this process. The study draws upon a number of disciplines such as economics, politics and science and engineering to provide a broad synthesis that allows the reader to understand the technicalities of the process. The conclusion reached is that there is no apparent solution to the problem of intergenerational costs of weapons, but that a key to controlling the growing cost of projects during their development lies in the construction of a more effective research and development strategy, a path followed by Margaret Thatcher's predecessors and one that is also being advocated today.

Author : Theo Farrell
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1349251097
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Weapons without a Cause written by Theo Farrell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are certain weapons acquired in the United States and others not? Theo Farrell addresses this question by examining the strategic, institutional and budgetary issues surrounding four major weapon programmes. Extensive use is made of primary sources in analysing the origins, development and outcomes of these programmes. This book presents alarming evidence to show how the military services manipulate weapons acquisition to suit their own ends rather than national security. It also analyses how Congress, motivated by concerns over cost, comes to play a greater role in shaping programme outcomes once weapons enter production.

Author : David M. Ricci
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300053401
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Transformation of American Politics written by David M. Ricci and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Washington think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation have become so large and influential in recent years that they now constitute virtually a new branch of the political system. In this engrossing and lively book, David M. Ricci brillantly explores the parallel and convergent social, economic, and political trends within America that have transformed government in Washington and led to the development and prestige of these public policy research centers. Ricci argues that since the late 1960s Americans have lost sight of the familiar guidelines that used to help them assess issues and have become more hospitable to think tank research and advice. He examines the flood of policy-relevant information that has resulted from the growth of expertise and the advent of big government; the confusion over national goals that comes from the decline of the Protestant ethic and the empowerment of minorities; the growing influence of television and its focus on instant testimony from experts; political changes such as the decline of parties, the move to an "open" Congress and the growth of an independent presidency; the pervasive power of modern marketing; and much more. According to Ricci, policy ideas generated by think-tank research and commentary are helpful in providing greater objectivity and political insight, not only because of their general reliability but also because in their ideological variety think tanks generate a substantial range of policy proposals, giving voice to a healthy factional pluralism and facilitating a constant testing of ideas. In today's dissonant politics, Ricci concludes, think tanks contribute some order - and occasionally wisdom - in the ongoing battle in Washington over political ideas.

Author : Peter DeLeon
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317453743
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thinking About Political Corruption written by Peter DeLeon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter deLeon argues that while it is often individuals who actually engage in political corruption, it is the US political system that condones or encourages such actions. Once this perspective is recognised, one can begin to understand ways in which the costs of corruption might be alleviated.